Abstract

This is a short history of malaria that covers many but not all of the major landmarks in the chronicle of significant discoveries.

The personality traits of many of the principal characters, especially the early ones, are portrayed. The jealousies of the investigators in the quests for credit and the major campaigns against the mosquito vectors of the disease is indicated by the subtitle of the book, “A History of The Hostilities Since 1880.”

The story opens with the early searches for the causes of malaria and how Laveran discovered the parasite. The intensified research on malaria that followed led to the incrimination by Ross of the mosquito as the vector and to the development of biological knowledge of the mosquito hosts and of the disease processes in man.

Once the parasite causing malaria and the insect that transmitted it were known, the job of eradicating the disease appeared deceptively simple, eliminate the mosquito!